No Unclean Thing
by Saucery
Summary: Dean Winchester is on his second tour of duty in Vietnam when he meets Jimmy Novak, Private First Class. But is Novak all that he seems to be? And why is he so desperate to keep Dean alive? Dean/Castiel. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. SLASH.


**NO UNCLEAN THING**

**- Chapter I -**

* * *

"For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you;  
therefore your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you, and turn away from you."  
(Deuteronomy 23:14)

* * *

It was Dean's second tour of duty, and there was this weird little nerd on Dean's platoon - Jimmy Novak, Private First Class - that stood out like a sore thumb. The first thing Dean noticed about him was that he was practically expressionless; the second was that he had absolutely _no_ sense of humor, which was pretty much suicide out here, since that was the only way to keep from going crazy. If you couldn't laugh at stupid shit, you couldn't bond with the guys, and you couldn't chase the nightmares away, and each bullet you put in an enemy combatant (human, human just like _you_) woke you up in the middle of the night and made you vomit into the soil outside your tent.

That was the reason Dean started keeping an eye on Novak; wouldn't do to have him _snap_, or something.

But Novak turned out to be fucking Zen, actually, like maybe he grew up on a commune, except hippies weren't Zen about killing people, and Novak obviously was. As far as Dean was concerned, there had to be something seriously _wrong_ with a man who could shoot another man - even a gook - point-blank and not bat an eyelash. Yet somehow, Novak didn't seem to be without compassion; he actually knelt down and _prayed_ after every skirmish, for every person he'd killed or wounded, and that was. That was really freaking strange. To sound so seriously and genuinely _remorseful_ about something he'd done so easily just a while ago.

Split personality? Nah. More like a really twisted code of honor. Or that was Dean's guess, anyway. As time passed, Dean could even see that it made a bizarre kind of sense - that Novak wasn't evil or bugfuck insane, just strange. Dean got used to it.

The other guys still gave Novak a wide berth, though, maybe 'cause they thought, like Dean used to, that Novak had the crazies - and PFC Bloomington even said a few snide things about 'our little choirboy,' now and then, that never got a rise. Novak just went around doing his thing - busting asses, failing to laugh at jokes, saying his prayers and quoting scripture at weird intervals. Sometimes, Novak crouched down on his haunches in the mud and the slime and looked up at the sky, clear-eyed and patient, as if it had answers for the questions the rest of them never dared to ask. As if he could _hear_ those answers.

And damn, if it didn't make Dean jealous of him.

Dean didn't want to admit it, but maybe Novak was more of a soldier than any of them. It just seemed to come so easily to him, going out there and killing and maybe even dying on someone else's orders. Dean had never been good at taking orders - that was what had got him court-martialed last year - but Novak looked like he'd walk into the gates of hell, without thinking twice about it, if the higher-ups told him to. It kind of made Dean hate him, a little. But mostly, it made him - curious wasn't quite the right word - made him _something_, anyhow, which was why he decided to talk to Novak one day.

And if Bloomington and Forsythe looked at him like he was willingly walking into the mouth of a crocodile, Dean ignored them.

"Hey, Jimmy," he said, hunkering down on the felled log where Novak was sitting with his banana leaf on his lap, eating their sucky rations with a silent, uncomplaining fortitude that definitely _did_ make the others hate him. "Your Dad in the army, or something?"

Novak finished chewing his last bite of food, all proper-like, and there was something about the delicacy of him - his fine-boned nose, his precise movements as he set aside his banana leaf - that made Dean realize, with an uncomfortable twitch in his stomach, that this was probably the source of Bloomington's 'fag' jokes.

"My Father," said Novak, and Dean could totally hear the capital F, "has commanded many battles."

"Whoa." So that was where Novak's blind obedience came from; his father was a fucking general. Talk about overkill. "Military family. That's cool." It seemed stifling to Dean, actually, whose idea of fatherly bonding was free-range shooting down at the ranch whenever his Dad wasn't too drunk to leave the damn couch, but there was no need to be rude to Novak on the occasion of their first real conversation.

"My brethren are all soldiers of the finest caliber." There was a new softness in Novak's voice, beneath the raspy monotone - an unusual affection, maybe even pride, that made Dean sit up and take notice. Because, being proud of your brothers? Dean got that.

"My brother Sammy'd make a great soldier, too. Too young to enlist right now, but damn if he doesn't want to." _Dean_ didn't want him to, because as much as he needed to be able to _share_ this with Sam, he didn't want Sam getting his fool head blown off. "I hope the war ends before he joins, though."

Novak flicked him an indecipherable glance. "Your brother is dear to you."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Aren't yours? Dear to you, I mean."

Novak blinked; he looked like he was considering it, like he _had_ to consider it. "Yes," he said, finally, in a peculiar sort of way, as if he'd never actually had to think about it before. "But I would not hope for any of them to be absent from a war; that would mean a greater chance of defeat, strategically, and - " a brief hesitation, too brief to almost catch " - it would be an injustice to their natures, to withhold them from battle."

This was the most he'd ever heard Novak say, to anybody, ever, but Dean was finally getting the feeling that Novak was a real _person_ in there. Behind the unearthly silence and the broody face and the dog-like patience. "You really do love them," said Dean, "if you can respect their wishes like that." Hell, Dean had a hard enough time trying to respect _Sam's_ wishes.

But Novak was looking weirdly poleaxed. "Wishes," he said, and stopped. "My brothers do not." He stopped again.

"Don't what?"

There was a silence, in which Novak looked up at the sky again. "One cannot be said to have 'wishes', Dean Winchester, if one is following one's nature."

"Yeah?" Now Novak really did sound like he came from a commune. Where they bullshitted about philosophy and the purpose of life, and crap like that. Like it was any _use_ in the real world. "Well, there'd be no free will, otherwise."

"Free will," said Novak, "is an illusion. It is the privilege of mortals."

Oh-kay. So what did Novak think his brothers were, immortal zombie vampires? Then again, maybe military families were just that stuck on making everyone fall in line. Novak sure _sounded_ like a zombie. "Choices don't mean anything unless you _choose_," said Dean. "It ain't a 'privilege', it's a fucking _necessity_. Pretty obvious, don't you think?"

Novak only looked at him.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Whether you want to fight in a war, or what side you want to fight on - that's all a choice. You can defect if you don't want to fight, or you can stay if you do. You only obey if you _want_ to. Who you want to." Dean shrugged. "If the people who fought against Hitler decided to fight _for_ him, that'd have been a really bad choice, right? Would've wrecked the world."

And just like that, Novak's expression cleared. "Those who followed Lucifer chose to do so," he said, like the Bible freak he was, "and it is for their 'choice' that they are judged. While I maintain that choice is a danger in the context of perpetual war, where the obedience of a soldier is paramount, you may be correct in asserting that obedience, in itself, is a choice." Novak tilted his head. "You are wiser, Dean Winchester, than you first appear."

Dean snorted. "And if that isn't the most backhanded compliment in history, I'll shoot myself in the foot."

Novak began to look worried; he was still mostly expressionless, but Dean thought he was maybe learning to tell those non-expressions apart. "Please, do not do so. There is no guarantee of such an occurrence not having taken place several times in history. Statistical probability itself prohibits the likelihood of any phenomenon without recurrence, and, at any rate, my compliment was sincere."

Dean stared at him. "Are you - that's a joke, right? You just made a joke. A really nerdy joke, but still." Dean laughed incredulously. "You sneaky little bastard. And all along, I thought you didn't get - "

"I am serious," interrupted Novak, in an I-am-so-deadly-serious-you-had-better-not-misunderstand-me tone. "I am completely serious, Dean Winchester. You will not shoot yourself in the foot."

Dean boggled. And wondered when he'd wandered into a Monty Python skit.

"The chances for gangrene alone are too high. I would also advise you not to turn a firearm on yourself in any event, or based on the projected probability of any phenomenon never having occurred in human history. I will be there to disarm you should such an unwise notion ever take possession of your mind again." And Jesus, he sounded _angry_. As if Dean really _had_ been planning to shoot himself in the - oh, hell.

Novak? Novak was definitely crazy. The kind of crazy Dean had heard about, but never actually seen, where folks couldn't understand other people's emotions and didn't know how to express their own, but weren't psychos or anything, just misfits.

So, yeah. Novak was crazy. But it was the _cute_ kind of crazy, because Novak didn't want Dean to get _hurt_, with a kind of earnestness that was just damn _sweet_, and he was too innocent (or maybe just literal-minded? Like a kid, or something) to get that Dean had been making a joke. Holy shit. No wonder he never laughed at jokes; he was probably terrified and perpetually freaked out by what most people took as 'humor'.

Novak was... Novak was _adorable_. Kid-brother adorable. Hell, even Sammy was more streetwise than this.

"Dean Winchester?" asked Novak, as if he couldn't use just one of Dean's names. He sounded even more worried, like maybe Dean looking down at his own toes meant that he was picking one of them to shoot.

"Oh, man." Dean ran a hand over his face, chuckled hoarsely, and sighed. "You're really something."

A puzzled frown marred Novak's forehead. "Everything is something," he said - and suddenly, Dean was overcome by a strange surge of emotion that had him flinging an arm around Novak's shoulders, pulling him close, just like he did with Sam or Bobby back home. Because Novak could totally _be_ his buddy. His weird, Bible-quoting, out-of-sync, alien-brain-in-a-human-body buddy, but still.

"You know what, Novak? I like you." He gave Novak a little shake.

Novak, for his part, looked like he'd just been hit over the head. His blue eyes - and wow, they were _blue_, really blue - were wide, and his mouth was sagging open.

So were the mouths of the rest of the platoon, come to think of it. Dean looked around at them, made a V-sign behind Novak's head, and grinned. 

* * *

They were 250 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City, and the villages were few and far between. The forest rustled with the sentience of more than just trees, and Dean knew he wasn't the only one who felt paranoid all the time. Those Vietcong fuckers were _watching_ them. Dean could _feel_ it. He was so antsy, even the straps of his backpack made his shoulders itch. His rifle was sweat-slick in his hands, and his knuckles ached from having to keep his grip steady as they frog-marched through the waist-high undergrowth. Mosquitoes buzzed around them; rotten fruit stank up the air underneath the trees; unseen eyes tracked their progress through the forest. It was hell.

So when they finally made camp, Dean headed straight for Novak; he'd taken to doing that, lately, because frankly, Novak was his best distraction. He was fighting alongside them, sure, but there seemed to be something about him that was always at a remove, pure and somehow otherworldly, and - well, he was damned funny, too. Some of the things he said had Dean chortling for _days_.

He was aware that the rest of the platoon didn't look too kindly on it, and PFC Carter had joined Bloomington's group in making insulting comments about 'butch' Winchester and 'namby' Novak, but Dean stared them into silence whenever he caught them at it. Not that Novak seemed to notice or even mind, but _Dean_ did. It was the principle of the thing. Sergeant Welling, their PSG, noticed the abuse but pretended not to see it. Yet another thing Dean didn't like about command chains; superiors just didn't _give_ a fuck.

"Dean," Novak greeted him, having been convinced some time ago to call Dean by only his first name. "How are you?"

"Shitty. You?"

"Well enough." Novak had finally caught on to the whole not-taking-Dean-literally thing, or he'd be asking about dysentery, right about now. Dean almost missed it, for the laugh factor.

"You know, I never see you writing letters to your family."

Novak paused. "Letters are needless. There is nothing that I think or do that my Father does not know of."

'Commander of armies,' yeah. Novak's Daddy was probably really high-up in the ranks, and could keep tabs on his sons through their superior officers. "What about a girlfriend?" he asked, on the spur of the moment. "Got one to write to?"

"A." Novak stopped, in the way Dean had taken to mean that Novak was either confused, or just parsing basic twentieth-century slang. Man, he must've grown up in a bomb shelter, or something. "A 'girlfriend' is like a wife, albeit without wedding vows, with whom a man conducts sexual congress." He looked askance at Dean, as if to confirm this.

No, _seriously_? Novak needed to confirm _this_? "You don't have a girlfriend," supplied Dean, unnecessarily.

"Do you?" That was plain honesty, right there; nothing daring in it at all.

Still, Dean felt his chest puff out. "I got a girl, sure. Several, even. Not 'girlfriends,' but girls that'll be real happy to see me get back, if you know what I mean." Dean winked. "Better than leaving a girl who'll be sad if I don't, right? Having fun, that's what it's all about." He'd seen his father haunted by grief in the years after their mother's death, and somehow, Dean hadn't been able to get into a proper relationship knowing that he'd be leaving someone behind. Just didn't seem right.

"I see." Novak sounded annoyingly like he'd heard what Dean _hadn't_ said, instead of what he had. His eyes were doing that almost-gentle thing they'd taken to doing around Dean, when Dean was especially tired, or sick, or shaken by a civilian getting caught in the crossfire.

Bastard. Okay, so he was picking up on human interaction skills thanks to Dean's brilliantly-devised crash course of meaningless conversations, but he didn't have to turn those skills on _Dean_. Not that Dean wanted him turning them on anyone else, either - which was strangely possessive, maybe, but who _wouldn't_ want to keep a buddy like Novak to themselves? There were times when the guy was pure comedy gold.

Dean decided to switch tacks. "Have you _ever_ had a girlfriend?" He really was curious, too.

Novak's face flushed. Wow, this was _awesome_.

"Have you ever slept with anyone?"

"I have slept with various members of the platoon on numerous reconnaissance - "

"Sex, Jimmy. Have you ever had _sex_?" And maybe it was bad of Dean, to bully Novak like this, but he seriously couldn't get enough of the way Novak was blushing - blushing! - and hunching his shoulders in on himself.

"...haven't had the opportunity to," Novak mumbled, and damn. Dean had to take the guy to a brothel, sometime. The girls would be all over him; he was that cute.

"Really? Well, you're coming with me next time I go out, you hear me? We're getting you some action. You are _not_ gonna die a virgin, Jimmy. I promise you that."

"There is no need to - to take such drastic. Measures." The back of Novak's neck was a bright red; Dean wondered if it would feel hot against his palm.

"Oh, but I think I'd like to." Dean's voice had dropped the way it did whenever he was thinking of sex; he couldn't help it.

Novak's eyes shot up to meet his, sudden and electric blue, and Dean realized that he had a hand on Novak's shoulder, right over his padded sweats.

Dean blinked. He removed his hand - and there was a whistle from somewhere, probably one of the others making a crude joke about Novak, again, but Dean paid them no mind.

* * *

** to be continued.**


End file.
